Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/338

 of breaking light. But it seemed to him that the darkness about him was waning, merging into a gray and ghostlike translucence. Somewhere out of the distance, as he looked, came the sound of a rooster crowing.

There was something incongruous in the trivial everydayness of that casual cock-crow. Yet this ludicrously commonplace sound sent a tingle of terror through him. It caused him to turn back to his ragged and ponderous slabs of logwood, lifting and tearing at them until blood dripped from his bruised finger-ends and his head swam as with a vertigo.

He leaped back, suddenly, with a galvanic start, as though the log at which he clutched had been a power-circuit. For close beside him stood the figure of Alicia, ghost-like in the uncertain grayness about them.

"The light's coming," she warned him. "I must help you."

"No—no," he cried, knowing such work was beyond her strength, "you must go back to the car! For God's sake, guard the car!"

"But you can't do it—you can't keep this up!" she cried, in pitying protest.

"Go back to the car ..... this is my work ..... and I'm going to finish it!"

The maddening thought that a new enemy,